The remaining dozen or so trees were reduced to lumber before the sun set, leaving the road clear all the way to LA-22. I could see a few downed trees blocking the road in the distance, but I could easily skirt them. Hell, I could have skirted this entire mess, but I’m glad I didn’t. Gideon and his followers have revived my faith in mankind.

I clapped a hand over my yawning mouth as the sun painted the smokey skies with virulent yellows and oranges. I could feel Miguel and Sparky complaining as they hauled another load of lumber to the church, but the bond told me they were just grumbling, not abused or in physical pain. The aurora blazed brightly overhead, with the Dragon’s Eye staring down upon us, glaring as we rebuilt our world in the chaos of its eruption.

With nothing but piles of lumber blocking my way, I turned my attention back to Gideon and his congregation. He was busy tying my efforts into a bundle with a salvaged steel cable so Miguel could haul it back to the church. Over the course of the last couple of hours I had learned to disperse the moisture in the lumber and produce cured wood that wouldn’t -shouldn’t-, shrink over time. This new power of mine relied heavily on intent. Where I had first intended to cut, the next few trees I intended for cured lumber. It cost me more mana - much more than I thought was necessary, but it worked. Instead of green lumber that would take months to be ready and shrink over time, I was producing building material that could be used immediately. The silver and gold motes seemed to be all purpose as far as I could tell.

“Looks like that’s the last of it,” Gideon said, offering me another sweating plastic bottle of water.

I took a sip and winced at the chemical taste. “You notice that plastic seems to be degrading faster than normal?” I asked.

He nodded. “We’re trying to get set up with more traditional methods, but it’s hard. Everything is made of plastic these days. Ready for supper?”

I grunted, stepping over the latest pile of lumber. Rendering trees into lumber was a zero-sum game. I was using the red motes I had collected instead of the golden ones in my core and I wasn’t getting any fresh red motes. I was more tired after processing the trees then I was before I started, even though I still had plenty of motes in the cloud waiting to be converted.

“A hot meal and a shower sounds good,” I said, scritching Sassy behind her ears. She had stayed on watch while I cleared the road.

“No showers yet,” He said, sounding glum. “We have buckets and rags to wipe away the sweat.” Gideon lead me towards the brick church, the asphalt road glittering in the dying sun, releasing a faint rainbow of motes into the aether.

“You can’t see that?” I asked.

“See what?”

“The asphalt decaying into motes of light.”

“No. It looks the same to me. But the pot holes are growing bigger.” He admitted. “Plastic bottles are springing leaks. Clothes and shoes are falling apart. What do you think it means?”

“No idea,” I confessed as we trudged up the road to the church. “But I can see things changing, melting away.”

He paused and turned to me. “How old do you think I am?”

I considered his face in the dying light of the sun. Maybe a hint of crows feet, no deep forehead creases. “In your late 30s,” I said after a moment.

He smiled shook his head. “I’m nearly 70, Emmett.”

Holy cow. “So your healing ability made you look young again?”

“It made me young,” he said, shaking his head. “I feel like a man in his 20s. So many temptations that I thought were conquered have risen to challenge me again.”

Gideon slowed his steps, reaching out an arm to me, allowing the others to pass by. “Are you a Christian?” He asked in a low voice.

I paused. I didn’t want to ruin anything. These seemed like good people. “No,” I said after a moment. “I’m agnostic. I’m willing to admit there may be a higher power, but I refuse to worship an idea.”

He nodded, as if confirming something he already knew, then spoke in a soft voice “I felt, thought I felt, a calling when I was young. An urge to preach the Word of God to the people. I haven’t felt that in a long time. I can’t deny the gift that I’ve received, the gifts that I’ve witnessed, but I still feel empty inside. I don’t feel that calling any more. I don’t feel the presence that called me. I’ve lost my faith and don’t feel worthy to lead these people.”

I considered his words, slowing my pace to match his. “Gideon,” I said, reaching out to grab his arm and stop him. With a mental twitch I sent Sassy up the road to keep anyone from interrupting. “Gideon, anyone who says they have all the answers is a liar. People need hope. The hope of reuniting with my family keeps me going. These people need hope. They may not need the God of Abraham right now, but do they need someone to guide them and keep them from devolving into savagery. They need someone like you to give them direction.”

Drawing a deep breath, I looked into his eyes, searching. Hazel, filled with worry. The violet spark in his forehead was visible to my psychic sight, slowly feeding on the cloud of motes it had gathered. “Why did you tell me this? If you have sins to confess, I’ll listen, but I cannot absolve you of those sins. That’s between you and whatever you call god”

He smiled sheepishly, lowering his eyes. “I have this feeling that you would be someone who would understand.” [1]

I do understand. This is someone at the end of their rope, someone crying out for help, pretending to be strong so others can rely on him. I’ve been here, right here, raising my children alone, terrified, and too damn proud to ask for help.

I embraced him suddenly, feeling him tense up in my arms as I pulled him in tight. “I’ll listen and swear to never tell another soul” I whispered.

He drew in a deep breath, then released it in small sobs, pouring out his worries and fears on my shoulder. I listened patiently as he listed his inadequacies and failures; the people he failed to heal, the guilt because he couldn’t fight against the beasts that crept out of the woods, the fear that everyone was doomed to Hell, the loss of his best friend to some monster.

I’m really not good at this stuff. Not for long anyway. Just ask my ex-wife. She’ll tell you quick that I’m an emotional clam.

We stood there for several awkward minutes before I drew back and planted a kiss on his sweaty forehead like I would one of my children.

“You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” I said, intoning the mantra I always recited to my children whenever they faced challenges. Gripping his shoulders firmly, I looked into his bloodshot eyes. “But the most important thing is that we have hope. Hope that tomorrow will be better than today, and that’s something we can work to make possible. You are more than qualified to lead these people. It’s hard, but they look to you for direction. Delegate when possible, let others help you with their expertise.”

“It’s terrifying,” he said in a small voice, touching his forehead. Then he laughed until he was holding his knees and gasping for breath. “I haven’t thought of Pooh bear since I was a little boy. Thank you Emmett, that’s exactly what I needed to hear. I don’t understand how you manage.”

“Talk to me after I’ve found my family. I’m shoving all those emotions into my stomach and ignoring them,” I confessed. “I could really, really, use a hard drink right now.”

Smiling, he quickly wiped his eyes and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get some supper. And maybe get you a drink.”

Over a hundred people had gathered around the Bethel Church of God over the last couple of days, seeking shelter and protection from the monsters roaming the world. Not all of them were parishioners; some were there because it was the only safe place with other people. There’s an odd comfort in being part of a crowd, even if it’s filled with strangers.

I joined Gideon, Mercy, and two others I didn’t know at a wood picnic table after I had cared for the horses and wiped down the sweat from my body. Gideon introduced me to the new faces and I learned that the woman was Nicole Graham, and the 8 year old boy with a cloud of green motes in his head was her son Nicholas. Nicole had a yellow core in her head and offered me a faint smile as I sat next to her.

“So what news do you have?” Gideon asked as we were served a potluck stew with several slices of white bread.

Crap. Does anyone around here even grow wheat? How can a man live without meat, potatoes, and bread?

“Not much, I’m afraid,” I admitted, adding wheat to my mental list of things to gather. “I’ve come from a small town just above Plainview, called the Village. Well, it has another name but I forget it. Most of the houses and businesses were burnt there, but hopefully they’re organising. Plainview has the National Guard protecting it, but the paper mill is… ominous. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere near it with the hazard of those chemicals getting loose. The men I spoke with seemed competent enough, but they didn’t know that guns were useless, so hopefully they’ve adapted.”

Mercy snorted. “We learned guns didn’t work the first day when Jeremy Varnado walked up proclaiming himself our new leader.”

“Oh?” I said. “What happened?”

“We drove him away with a good beating after he tried to shoot us,” She said, a small frown creasing her forehead. It was obvious that it wasn’t a good memory.

“Highwaymen assaulted me after I left Plainview,” I continued. “I managed to overcome them, but there was a cost.” I didn’t mention the girl. I couldn’t. I still felt guilty for leaving her behind.

“And there was a gathering of people under the Chitto river bridge,” I continued. “They seemed nice enough, and had a really talented girl with a red spark in her head. She could control a dozen different different weapons. Super scary.”

Nicole made a slight snorting noise next to me.

“What’s your talent?” I asked Nicole, tucking into my bowl of stew. I had a glass of water on one side and a small amount of cheap ‘medicinal’ whiskey in a glass next to it. Gideon had come through with the drink, bless him.

“I can see things far away,” she said. “I warn the others about monsters or people who want to hurt us.”

“That’s very important,” I nodded, spooning the stew into my mouth. It was a bit thin, but flavourful and there was plenty of bread to sop up the juices. “What’s your range?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a mile?”

That’s over 1700 yards, much further than I could ping with my psychic hearing.

“So you didn’t see me coming down the road?”

Nicole focused on her stew, muttering “No.” Under her breath.

Score one for stealth mode!

I could see her spark flashing brightly every few seconds, reminding me of the pings that I would send out. “You’re doing it right now, aren’t you?” I said

“Isn’t it obvious?” She said, rolling her eyes. “The light in our heads kinda gives it away.”

“Yeah, I suppose it does,” I admitted, pinging mine.“What about that guy?” I asked, pointing at a guy in the crowd whose heart-stone was pulsating.

“What guy?”

“That one right there,” I pointed, “with the pulsating heart stone.”

“Pulsating… heartstone?” She said, looking over the gathered crowd. “No. I don’t see that.”

I sent Sassy into the crowd with a mental command, causing a small ruckus as she moved among the people, stopping when she reached the man I had pointed out. He looked at her, then up at the table where we were seated. I waved him up and Sassy escorted him to the table.

Gideon and Mercy looked at me, their eyes filled with questions as the stranger approached. “Can someone get him a chair?” I asked as he drew near.

One of the ever present teens appeared with a fold-up chair as he stood before the table.

“Please, have a seat,” I said, motioning to the chair. “My name is Emmett Carter, and yours?”

“Tommy Gibson,” He said, dropping into the chair. [2]

Tommy was stocky, brown-haired man with a beer belly that strained to burst through the stained white shirt he wore. “I could see you doing something with your heart stone,” I said.

“Heart stone?”

“A green spark of light in your chest. I could see it pulsing. What were you doing? Can you do it again?”

He grunted and lowered his voice, embarrassed. “I was just making the stuff in my veins move faster.”

“You can see the motes?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I can sorta feel this stuff running through me. So I was concentrating on my breathing, circling it around. I don’t know nothing about no motes.”

“Do this for me,” I said, leaning in close, examining the dense cloud of multi-coloured motes surrounding the tiny spark in his chest. “Focus on your heart. There’s a cloud of motes surrounding it. I call it Mana. I want you to concentrate on condensing those motes into a torus, a donut. Squeeze them down and make them spin around your heart. Go ahead and try now.”

Tommy looked at me, then to Gideon, then closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I could see motes enter his lungs and condense, entering his bloodstream and flowing herky-jerky towards his heart.

He let out a deep breath after a minute and opened his eyes. “I can sort of feel something?” He said. “But it’s… like, I dunno. Like focusing on your pulse? I can feel it, but I can’t control it.”

“Try again,” I encouraged, struck with inspiration. “Don’t tell it what to do, suggest. Like a… Like a swing. When you feel it moving the right way, push it a little.”

Tommy closed his eyes again. The cloud of motes around his heart stirred, spinning sluggishly as he took another breath. I held my breath, silently encouraging him. He took another breath, and the motes spun faster, and faster, until they coalesced into a wobbly disc surrounded by a faint cloud of motes. They shuddered, threatening to break apart, then flared into a stable accretion disc.

Tommy gripped the wooden picnic table, his eyes open wide. “I can feel it,” he said, splintering the wood under his fingers. Luminous green veins ran along his arms, fed by the silvery motes sacrificed to his heart-stone, pulsing with the beat of his heart. “I feel strong!”

“And when you burn up all that mana, you’re gonna feel like crap,” I warned. “Save your strength and meditate, concentrate on making that disc thicker.”

Tommy looked down at his fingers buried in the wooden planks of the picnic table and slowly pulled them out, marveling at the destruction. “This is… I can’t describe it.”

“It’s just one step on a journey of a thousand miles,” I said, leaning back to look at Gideon. “Will you have someone bring me the corpse of a small animal please? I really need to test something out.” With a twitch of our mental, bond, I sent Sassy out searching for a replacement in the dark woods.

Gideon motioned to one of the young people and relayed the request.

I could see the motes condensing around Tommy’s heart as he closed his eyes and focused on his breath. Inhale, exhale exhale exhale, inhale. The accretion disc was slowly building, the multicoloured cloud surrounding his heart feeding it, and in turn it was pushing silvery motes into his green core.

I could hear Nicole regulating her breathing next to me, as she turned her attention inwards.

A gangly teenager appeared a couple of minutes later, the corpse of a flash rabbit in his hands. I grabbed it with my invisible psychic tentacles causing him to yelp, and set it on the table between me and Tommy. It was leaking mostly yellow motes into the aether, where they swirled on an invisible wind and vanished.

Mercy made a noise of disgust as she eyed the rabbit on the table.

“Place your hands over the rabbit,” I said to Tommy. “There are thousands of motes flowing from it. Try to pull them into your hands.”

Tommy squinted at me then held his hands over the corpse, closeing his eyes again and breathing deeply. His hands drew closer and closer to the rabbit until they touched. A minute later, I could see the motes begin flowing up his arms, swirling through his veins,

“Ah!” He exclaimed. “I can feel it!”

I watched as the rabbit was converted into mana, flowing into Tommy and leaving behind nothing but a yellow core on the wood table. His eyes opened, a frown of disappointment creasing his mouth. “It’s all gone.”

“Yup.” I grinned, overjoyed that I wasn’t some accursed ghoul destined to feed on the dead. “You drank it all.” I could see the yellow motes swirling through his veins, swishing through his heart and cycling around the accretion disc where they were converted to silvery motes that fed his green heart stone.

“Can I have another?” He asked.

“Your blood is filled with yellow motes, mana, from the rabbit,” I said. “It needs to be converted. If you absorb too much, it’ll be bad for you.”

Tommy pouted like a disappointed child. “So what should I do?”

“Meditate. Cycle the mana around your heart until it’s all converted.” I said. Honestly, I had no clue. That seemed like the right thing to do. It was what I had been doing. Drink something, cycle the mana, feed it to the core. The cloud collected the motes, the disc converted them into silver motes that fed the core, and the core turned them into appropriately coloured motes filled with energy. When I drank those two horse thieves, I felt like I was going to burn up - too much can’t possibly be good.

Sometimes the best advice is regrets.

Nicole gave a small gasp next to me. “I can see it!” She exclaimed. “I can see the mana!” [3]

“What do you see?” I prompted, turning towards her.

“It’s a fog, it’s everywhere. It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “I can see it flowing into my lungs and into my blood. It swirls around my head and I can move it. I can see a donut around your spark, it has layers and layers and layers. Spirals inside of spirals.”

I nodded, my smile stretching from ear to ear. This was good stuff, teaching people how to use their gifts, to learn more about themselves. “Can you spin the mana around the spark in your head?”

She frowned, concentrating. “Maybe?” The thick cloud of yellow motes moved sluggishly as I watched, spinning into a fractal torus that spun faster and faster until it deformed into some sort of helix dancing around her core. Her breath came in short gasps as the motes bled from her veins and into the construction. “Oh. My God. I can see everything.”

Nicole collapsed onto the table, overturning her bowl of stew. The helix in her head shuddered, fracturing and threatening to break apart and scatter at any moment.

“Mom!” Nicholas yelled, shaking her shoulder in panic.

Placing a hand on her back, I pushed my aura against hers, willing the yellow motes flowing through my veins to pass into her.

Gideon rose with concern in his eyes, looking over at Nicole. “Wait a moment,” I said. “Hold up Nicholas, let me try to help.”

Yellow energy flowed from my head, through my arm, and against Nicole’s aura where it piled up. A moment later it flowed through and into cloud of motes surrounding the yellow spiral in her head, bleeding into the construct that she had created. I could feel her consciousness struggling to reboot, emotions and half-seen visions flooded though me as I pushed the yellow motes into her. Something about half-naked muscular Vikings. A minute later she sat up with a groan.

“Ugh,” She moaned. “Worst hangover ever.”

“That bad?” I asked.

“Yeah. I could see…” She inhaled deeply and pointed towards the dark woods. “I saw everything. Everything! There’s something horrible that way,” She said, pushing away my arm. “It hates you more than anything else in the world.”

Nicole was pointing east, back where I left Baxter. Maybe I should have triple tapped.

1. Gideon is an Empathic Healer. He can sense the emotions of others as well as influence the emotional state of others in his sphere of influence. Training is required to stop the unconscious leakage of personal emotions.

2. Tommy Gibson is the first recorded Physical Cultivator. His strength is legendary and almost certainly exaggerated.

3. Nicole Graham is a Empathic Clairvoyant, with an awareness that eventually covered dozens of kilometres around her. Her son Nicholas, along with all the other pre-pubescent children, has an unformed core. It is not uncommon for unformed cores to shift colours before condensing.

Copyright © 2020, Conteur. All Rights Reserved.

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